Aigronne Valley Wildlife pages

Friday, 15 February 2019

Yes, it is over six months since anything was posted... but things keep getting in the way....
So for the time being, I will just post pictures and a smidgin of text!!

Firstly... Pauline was awoken at 1AM by an overflight in the moonlight of thousands of cranes...
they didn't wake me... too tired these nights.

So, although it was impossible to take pictures anyway.... here's a gratuitous shot of some cranes headed in the same Northwesterly direction....

A flight of four....
{part of a much bigger one!!}

Last year was spent trapping and photographing moths....
These are just a couple from a series....
"Invertebrate on a stick!"
....trying to take "non-textbook pictures that show the beauty of these creatures we live amongst....

A Barred Sallow [Xanthia aurago]
{quite a cutie}

A European Hornet [Vespa crabro]
{these also hunt at night and I frequentlyget them in the trap!}

So... just a couple... but I have hundreds of pictures to work through!

Sunday, 22 July 2018

I was strolling round our watermeadow, early doors...
looking for interesting pictures of the wildlife...
when this scene occurred in front of me...
I was just about to take a picture of the "Pea Penny-pipes" when it was pounced upon by this Blue-tailed Damselfly...

....and she crawled forwards onto a dead plant... where I could see through the viewfinder what was happening.

The reason Pennipipes had suddenly become subdued was very clear... the female Common Bluetail that attacked her had chewed through the thorax and consumed her flight muscles!

You can see from the side shot here that her thorax has been chewed from start to finish...

...and that was enough for the smaller damselfly... who, having fatally crippled the Featherlegs... went off and rested just above on a dying nettle!!

I moved Penny Featherlegs to a wild carrot flowerhead where she would be more visible to predators... doubting that the Common Bluetail would be back for more.

and this final photo is a close-up I took before leaving, which shows the extent of the damage.

Sorry, Nature isn't nice and twee.... it is nasty... but with beautiful moments!
Given the number of warblers we have here...
and the swallows, tits, wolf spiders, big bushcrickets...
and my favourites... the huge wasp spiders... carnivores all...
the Bluetail itself could have bought it by the end of the day!!
Even sparrows and other seed eaters hunt insects at this time of the year....
to feed their growing young.

Friday, 8 September 2017

What does the Passenger want you to see...
Well, perhaps it is easier to say what it doesn't want you to see....
it, and all the other wonderfully patterned moths, don't want you to see a potential meal!!
Save those like the Tigers, the Cinnabar and other very brightly coloured insects...
they, apparently, are saying "Don't eat me, I'm yucky!"
No, I've not tried!!!
But these, whilst often seen in flight during the day, are few in number.

The vast majority of moths are resting at that time and only flying at night.
So they need to remain unseen...
the most well known of these was the Peppered Moth [Biston betularia]... often cited as "evolution in action"*...
where...int'Black Country and t'grime of t'far North'n cities with the mills and steelworks...
a dark form evolved... and thrived... because it couldn't be seen at rest.
And, now, with the "big clean up", it has become much rarer.

Everyone knows the Buff-Tip... which tries to make us think that it is a broken birch twig....

Here, it is actually on a broken willow branch....
so it isn't restricted in its choice of places to rest!

and the Lappet, in silhouette in the previous post, even has "leaf veins"!

The leaf veins are showing very well on the lower wing of this one.

But what is the Passenger trying to imitate?
As a moth, it is a very "flat-winged" one...

It is a very delta-winged moth.

but, by "posing" in a nose downward position, it is imitating a curled over, dead leaf.
A total optical illusion... but very effective... all the insect needs to do is keep its tail towards the sun...
et, voila...
it is a dead leaf.

Not one of my best pix....
but I had released it well before looking at it onscreen...
and spotting the illusion.

And it is all done with pixels...
nature invented digital art before computers were even a Greek dream!

And here are the pixels!!

*Personally, with the Peppered Moth, my take is that a dark form had always existed!Many moths have dark forms... given the right conditions, they will be more successful... simply because they are the least likely to be picked off as a tasty snack

Friday, 1 September 2017

Sometimes book illustrations get it so wrong...
whilst being "right and proper"....
moths are one example...
illustrations of the waterside plant Butterburr [Petasites hybridus] Chapeau-du-Diable being another.... it always has tiny holes in the leaves caused by the Strawberry Snail [Trichia striolata] that feeds under the leaves. Artists have always "cleaned" the leaves when they paint illustrations for books.

A Lobster Moth [Stauropus fagi] fr... on a rendered wall... in normal, and book, position.

All moths are portrayed heads-up or from the side....
to show the underwing, quite often the moth is pictured with one pair open....
usually the right... and so it should be, you need to be shown the characteristics...
but they are always a bit "museum"!
Possibly because museum specimens were used to do the drawings??
But, possibly also, because that is the "norm"!

But on websites, I have noticed that the photographs are also quite often corrected...
the moth doesn't actually adopt the position shown in the books... but the picture's editor....
possibly the photographer... possibly the website owner[s]...
have orientated the moth to the book position.
You don't actually find the moth in that position...
and the direction of light shows it has been rotated.

An "almost-silhouette" of a Lappet...
showing the leaf outline... not the right plant...
but it chose to fly off and settle there!!

Take the moth at the beginning of this post... The Passenger [Dysgonia algira] la Passagère...
a moth new to me... but a beautiful example of evolution.
I rotated the first picture to the "book" position.BUT... this is how it was in the trap...

And a better picture taken later...

And this is the position it immediately adopted on release back to the wild...

... in both cases, as in the trap, head down.
But can you see why?
Let your eyes relax a little and look at those last few pictures...
can you see the optical illusion?
Remember that the moth is a flat-winged creature...
the illusion is created in "pixels"... each wing scale being a "pixel"....!!

Sunday, 20 August 2017

After yet another gardening break...
and we are almost ready for the growing season... OK...OK... I know it has gone mid-AUGUST...
but the drought and then the heat held us back.
But, on the other hand, we'll be eating food "out of season"....
when it begins to get expensive in the shops...
So any bloggin' has taken a back seat...

We had a marvellous visit, though, at the start of May, by fellow LPO Refugers...
a reunion for LPO members who have declared their patch of land, or balcony...
as a Refuge LPO....
which visits a different persons refuge each year...
and this year, we had been asked to host the day...
with lots to see and lots talked about.... a guided walk around the Refuge...
broken around midday by a picnic lunch, plenty eaten... quite a lot drunk...
and then a great Orchid Walk from Susan of Loire Valley Nature in the afternoon.

The Moorhens decided to nest just beside the bridge this year...
having destroyed the patch of yellow iris...
there is only so much bending and destruction of the leaves that a plant can take!!
But the nest was very visible from the bridge and gave a very nice intro to the site...
and, for a change, had local naturalists... whispering!!

At the six egg stage... she finally laid nine.
Five survived through the early days and were split 2 & 3 amongst the adults.

Then Pauline led the group around the meadow using her new chariot!!
The day was nice, weatherwise... and plenty of wildlife seen...
and we even river-dipped...
with a net!

Pauline introducing the visitors to the meadow...
the raised side bar of "The Chariot" can be seen on the right.

Lunch was had.... and on the way to the orchids, we stopped on the 'flatlands' above Chaumassay to see if we could spot the larks that frequent the fields just there... and anything else that would be different from the valley fauna... and were treated to a wonderful exhibition by a male Hen Harrier... both quartering the fields and.... new for me... trying to flush small birds from the treetops.
As there has been a "vole crash" locally, I am presuming that this 'out of the ordinary' behaviour is a little observed method of hunting when times are tight.

The walk proved interesting...with a number of oddities spotted... the best for me, though, was discovering the very strange larva of a Bloody-nosed Beetle [Timarcha tenebricosa] le Crache-sang.... a "Jabba the Hutt" type of critter....
anyway...
here's a load of pictures from the day.

Two views of a male Beautiful Demoiselle [Calopteryx virgo meridionalis] le Caloptéryx vierge méridional...
this is indicated by the fact that the wing colour doesn't quite reach the body...
in C. virgo virgo, it goes from the body almost to the wingtip.

A nice fat Roman or Burgundy or Edible Snail [Helix pomatia] escargot de Bourgogne, or Gros blanc...
and also known as escargot de Champagne....
these are actually really heavy when they get to this size!!

Spiderlings of the Garden Spider [Araneus diadematus] l'Épeire diadème...
which carry the same back pattern as the adults.
All orb-web spiders... as well as many other species...
form these dense clusters of newly hatched youngsters for the first few days.

A Woundwort...
most probably Marsh Woundwort [Stachys palustris] Épiaire des marais...
given the habitat and pattern on the labia....
although hybrids between Marsh and Hedge Woundwort are not uncommon.
We have Hedge Woundwort by the front fence.... and is a lot darker...
this, though, is by the Aigronne.

A "nest" of Peacock caterpillars on a nettle plant

And then the afternoon and orchids...

Susan of Loire Valley Nature giving a talk on the orchids at Chaumassay....
before leading a walk along the road and up through the woods to the right.

....then a hypochromatic version.
Hypochromatic means lacking in colour.... and this one is very pale...
but you can see a tinge of pink.

Then it was single file up the hill into the woods.

Where, as mentioned, I discovered the "Jabba the Hutt" larva of a Bloody-nosed Beetle...
they feed on members of the Goosegrass family...
in this case, found on Madder [Rubia peregrina] Garance voyageuse.

And a male Crab Spider [Synema globosum]... named for the female's very spherical abdomen.
This fella is 3 to 4mm from nose to tail...
in fact, his front legs, at 4mm long, make him look much larger.

We also dipped a net in the millstream before lunch and came up with a few goodies...

A caddisfly larva in its sand tube...
possibly one of the Limnephilidae, which tend to build long, straight tubes....
you can just see its front pair of legs... the others hold it in the tube...
and a Water Mite...Hydrachna sp. possibly, as the habitat fits.

A couple of mayfly larvae... type again unknown... an Olive or a Dun of some sort...

And, finally, a Freshwater Shrimp [Gammarus pulex]...
along with a very small spire-shelled water snail.

And so went the day....
In other news...
the moth trap has had two airings per month...
middle and end on the "half-moons" as it cannot compete with a full moon...
and the identified species count is now up to 230 micro and macromoths...
with plenty more unidentified... mainly the micros.

My favourite spider, Argiope, is back with a vengance... they seem to be everywhere in the verger and one in the potager... plus some casually spotted in the meadow...

And the bief [millstream] has been declared out of bounds to fishermen... it has become a nursery for truitelles... baby trout.
More on all this in future posts....

Spotted on the Web

We collect links to interesting Natural History & Environmental stories that we spot on the Interweb...this is where we draw your attention to them...[and there is an archive page of the same name... where you can also leave comments]

"In the past few years there has been a "wild food" boom with celebrity chefs heading for the great outdoors in search of fresh ingredients. So, how practical is it to live solely on wild food? And does spurning the supermarket, as some critics have claimed, make you just a bit annoying?"

Wildlife in the Aigronne and Touraine du Sud

Based at our house near Le Grand Pressigny, we are centrally placed between The Brenne & The Loire Anjou Touraine National Parks and the Sologne, enabling us to observe wild events and discover new [to us] insects, plants and birds.

We started this record in 2003, when we bought La Forge and from time to time we will be publishing the odd species list of what we've seen here at La Forge and in the immediate vicinity.

We've also been building a collection of finds, mainly from prehistory... we record those as well on the blog Touraine Flint.As well as pictures on this site, we've been posting to flickr.

Guided Tours in a lovely limo!

Susan&Simon from Days on the Claise have another blog, Loire Valley Nature, which is "designed to be used as an English language natural history web resource for lowland central France." .

Please note:

The early listings were only a few observations with an entry and usually no record of numbers!They had been taken directly from our 'birders notebook'Where there are further details from the book we keep at the house, they will be added later.